In the roadway construction industry, various surface treatments are conventionally applied to impart desired characteristics to a roadway. For example, surface treatments (e.g., coatings) can be applied to roadway surfaces to increase the coefficient of friction of the roadway, thereby reducing the possibility of slippage or skidding on the roadway. Conventionally, such high-friction surface treatments include polymer resin (e.g., epoxy resin) and aggregate materials that are separately applied in a stepwise process. Frequently, when using conventional methods of surface treatment application, the surface treatments are not mixed thoroughly, and there is no mechanism for real-time variation in the width of material distributed to a roadway surface. Additionally, conventional systems for applying roadway surface treatments have a lengthy and inefficient startup and shutdown process. Further, creep drives and other systems for adjusting the speed at which the application equipment moves along the roadway offer insufficient control to produce consistent surface treatments. Still further, conventional systems are incapable of continuously loading material to be dispensed on the roadway surface; this deficiency often leads to undesirable transverse joints in the roadway.
Therefore, there is a need within the art for systems and methods for addressing one or more of the above-described limitations.